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24The Modern Guise of the Good (edited book)Routledge. 2024.This book is the first-ever collection dedicated to the guise of the good in early modern and later Western philosophy. It spans three centuries from Thomas Hobbes to Henry Sidgwick and features original contributions by some of the finest scholars. One of the staple items of Western philosophy is the idea that we can only desire, or pursue, something under the guise of the good: if we see nothing good about it, we cannot want it. After enjoying its heydays in ancient and medieval philosophy, th…Read more
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178Happy Egrets Strike Back?In Andrés Garcia, Mattias Gunnemyr & Jakob Werkmäster (eds.), Value, Morality & Social Reality: Essays dedicated to Dan Egonsson, Björn Petersson & Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, Department of Philosophy, Lund University. pp. 297-307. 2023.In this paper I articulate and respond to Kent Hurtig's objection to the fitting attitude account of value (FA). According to the objection, when a good or bad state of affairs is indexed to the actual world, but is such that the actual world does not contain anyone for whom it is fitting to (dis)favor it, it cannot be fitting for anyone in a non-actual world to (dis)favor it. So there are good or bad states of affairs that it is not fitting for anyone to (dis)favor. First I comment on a solutio…Read more
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108Bernard Williams on the guise of the goodEuropean Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.The guise of the good is the thesis that an agent can only want, or intentionally do or pursue something, if and because this seems good to the agent in some respect or other. Bernard Williams criticizes the guise of the good in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In this paper I reconstruct and assess his hitherto unnoticed critical remarks. Williams's opposition is based on the idea that it takes an “extra step” to go from desiring or pursuing something to thinking of it as good. To show this…Read more
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53The Guise of the Good: A Philosophical HistoryRoutledge. 2023.This is the first book to trace the doctrine of the guise of the good throughout the history of Western philosophy. It offers a chronological narrative exploring how the doctrine was formulated, the arguments for and against it, and the broader role it played in the thought of different philosophers. In recent years there has been a rich debate about whether value judgment or value perception must form an essential part of mental states such as emotions and desires, and whether intentional actio…Read more
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68The New Explanatory Objection Against the Fitting Attitude Account of ValuePhilosophia 50 (4): 1845-1860. 2022.The explanatory objection against the fitting attitude account of value states that if the properties of attitudes explain fittingness facts, but do not always explain value facts, then value facts cannot be identical with or reduced to fittingness facts. One reply to this objection is to claim that the constitutive properties of attitudes also explain value facts, for they are enablers for the value possessed by an object. In this paper we argue that the enabling maneuver exposes FA to a new ex…Read more
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70The explanatory objection to the fitting attitude analysis of valuePhilosophical Studies 178 (4): 1207-1221. 2020.The fitting attitude analysis of value states that for objects to have value is for them to be the fitting targets of attitudes. Good objects are the fitting targets of positive attitudes, while bad objects are the fitting targets of negative attitudes. The following paper presents an argument to the effect that value and the fittingness of attitudes differ in terms of their explanations. Whereas the fittingness of attitudes is explained, inter alia, by both the properties of attitudes and those…Read more
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88The modern guise of the goodPhilosophical Explorations 24 (1): 1-4. 2021.The guise of the good is the claim that whatever I desire or intentionally do is seen by me as good in some respect. Historical scholarship has so far predominantly focused on ancient and medieval...
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76Perverse ReasonsPhilosophy 96 (3): 457-480. 2021.For an agent to be motivated by a normatively perverse reason is to be motivated by a normative or evaluative thought as such which, if true, would count as such against the action that it motivates the agent to perform, or against the attitude that it motivates the agent to take. For example, that an action is morally wrong or prudentially bad counts, as such, against performing the action. When the thought that an action is morally wrong or prudentially bad motivates me as such to perform the …Read more
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127Mill’s proof and the guise of the goodPhilosophical Explorations 24 (1): 93-105. 2021.The guise of the good doctrine is the view that whatever we desire, we desire it under the guise of the good, i.e. it appears good to us in some way. In this paper I first clarify the role that the doctrine of the guise of the good plays in the first step of J. S. Mill’s proof of the principle of utility (in which he shows that one’s happiness is desirable as an end). Then I provide textual evidence in favour of ascribing the doctrine to Mill, arguing that he commits to it to the extent that he …Read more
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970The recent #metoo movement has turned public attention to the problem of sex under conditions of power inequality. Is consent impaired, when you have plenty to lose (e.g. a great professional opportunity) from saying “no” to a sexual advance? And even if consent is valid, is this a morally acceptable situation, especially if one party is aware that their position of relative power will influence the other’s decision to have sex? Such situations bring to the fore not only the issues of coerced se…Read more
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35The Normative and the Evaluative. The Buck-Passing Account of ValuePhilosophical Quarterly 70 (280): 652-655. 2020.The Normative and the Evaluative. The Buck-Passing Account of Value. By Rowland Richard.
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72Hume and the Guise of the BadJournal of Scottish Philosophy 18 (1): 39-56. 2020.In Treatise 2.3.4 Hume provides an explanation of why ‘we naturally desire what is forbid, and take a pleasure in performing actions, merely because they are unlawful’. Hume’s explanation of this phenomenon has barely received any attention so far. But a detailed analysis bears fruit for both Humean scholarship and contemporary moral psychology. After putting the passage in its context, I explain why desiring and taking pleasure in performing certain actions merely because they are unlawful pose…Read more
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77Richard Rowland, The Normative and the Evaluative. The Buck-passing Account of Value (review)Philosophical Quarterly. 2019.
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411Seks, surm ja perverssus [Sex, Death and Perversion]Akadeemia 7. 2019.The concept of perversion has traditionally been applied particularly to the sexual sphere, in order to condemn certain desires and certain practices as wrong or inappropriate because of their unnaturalness, as they are understood as a deviation from a given function of sexuality. In this article, I explore the question whether and how such a concept could be applied to another central dimension of our existence, namely our death and, in particular, whether it makes sense to talk of perverted at…Read more
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11Kuidas antropotseenis õigesti talitada [How to behave rightly in the Anthropocene]Vikerkaar 9 (September 2019). 2019.A quick overview of the main ethical and ethical-political alternatives facing our moral predicament in the so-called Anthropocene, striking a note of relative optimism. (I'll be happy to share an English version on request.)
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295Mill and sexual reformThink 17 (50): 101-112. 2018.Should positional sexual misconduct (sexual advances or interaction where one party is known, or should be known, to have a significant power over the other) be included in the list of morally forbidden behaviours? I explore benefits and costs of this moral reform with the help of J. S. Mill.
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642Normative Judgment and Rational Requirements: A Reply to RidgeAnalytic Philosophy 59 (2): 281-290. 2018.I examine and rebut Ridge’s two arguments for Capacity Judgment Internalism (simply qua their particular character and content, first person normative judgments are necessarily capable of motivating without the help of any independent desire). First, the rejection of the possibility of anormativism (sec. 2), second, an argument from the rational requirement to intend to do as one judges that one ought to do (sec. 3). I conclude with a few remarks about the nature of this requirement and about v…Read more
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58Elliott, Kevin C. , A Tapestry of Values: An Introduction to Values in Science, New York: Oxford University Press, 224pp, ISBN 9780190260804 (review)Acta Baltica Historiae Et Philosophiae Scientiarum 5 (2): 116-121. 2017.Book review.
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260David Ross, Ideal Utilitarianism, and the Intrinsic Value of ActsJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 1 (2). 2012.The denial of the intrinsic value of acts apart from both motives and consequences lies at the heart of Ross’s deontology and his opposition to ideal utilitarianism. Moreover, the claim that acts can have intrinsic value is a staple element of early and contemporary attempts to “consequentialise” all of morality. I first show why Ross’s denial is relevant both for his philosophy and for current debates. Then I consider and reject as inconclusive some of Ross’s explicit and implicit motivations f…Read more
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52Russ Shafer-Landau, ed. , Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 6 . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 33 (1): 77-81. 2013.
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156Ethical Non-naturalism and the Guise of the GoodTopoi 37 (4): 581-590. 2018.The paper presents a positive argument for a version of metaphysically light ethical non-naturalism from the nature of mental states such as desires. It uses as its premise the time-honoured, and recently rediscovered, doctrine of the guise of the good, whereby it is essential to desire that the object of desire be conceived as good or as normatively favoured under some description. The argument is that if the guise of the good is a correct theory of desire, then a certain version of non-natural…Read more
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92Naturalism and the Buck-Passing Account of ValuePhilosophical Writings 32 (2): 58-77. 2006.It has been thought that the prospects for non-naturalism about normativity may be significantly advanced if non-naturalists take the relation of being a reason as the basic normative entity, and so if, inter alia, they endorse a buck-passing account of value. This is thought to yield theoretical benefits regarding (i) the open question argument, (ii) the defence against the charge of queerness, and (iii) demands of parsimony. In the paper I contest these claims. Non- naturalists need not focus …Read more
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129Value TheoryBloomsbury Academic. 2015.What is it for a car, a piece of art or a person to be good, bad or better than another? In this first book-length introduction to value theory, Francesco Orsi explores the nature of evaluative concepts used in everyday thinking and speech and in contemporary philosophical discourse. The various dimensions, structures and connections that value concepts express are interrogated with clarity and incision. Orsi provides a systematic survey of both classic texts including Plato, Aristotle, Kant, M…Read more
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90Sidgwick and the Morality of PurityRevue d'Etudes Benthamiennes 10 (10). 2012.The aim of this work is to bring analytically to light Sidgwick’s complex views on sexual morality. Sidgwick saw nothing intrinsically, self-evidently, and even derivatively wrong in getting sexual pleasure for its own sake. However, the overall consequences of attempting to modify common sense in matters of sexual ethics seemed to him to be worse, at his time, than retaining the moral category of purity. Sidgwick’s view is then contrasted with John Stuart Mill’s, whom he directly mentions in th…Read more
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72How to Be a Friend of Absolute GoodnessPhilosophia 41 (4): 1237-1251. 2013.This paper critically examines Richard Kraut’s attack on the notion of absolute value, and lays out some of the conceptual work required to defend such a notion. The view under attack claims that absolute goodness is a property that provides a reason to value what has it. Kraut’s overall challenge is that absolute goodness cannot play this role. Kraut’s own view is that goodness-for, instead, plays the reason-providing role. My targets are Kraut’s double-counting objection, and his ethical objec…Read more
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135Obligations of NearnessJournal of Value Inquiry 42 (1): 1-21. 2008.Frances Kamm argues that physical distance is per se relevant to our duty to give aid to strangers.
Her methods, however, fail to bring into light the relevance per se of distance. To understand the claim that
distance is per se morally relevant, it is helpful to use distinctions devised by Jonathan Dancy among
different roles a feature may play in the explanation of moral reasons, yielding thus different senses of
relevance. A feature can directly count in favor of an action, enable another feature…Read more -
142What’s wrong with Moorean buck-passing?Philosophical Studies 164 (3): 727-746. 2013.In this paper I discuss and try to remove some major stumbling blocks for a Moorean buck-passing account of reasons in terms of value (MBP): There is a pro tanto reason to favour X if and only if X is intrinsically good, or X is instrumentally good, or favouring X is intrinsically good, or favouring X is instrumentally good. I suggest that MBP can embrace and explain the buck-passing intuition behind the far more popular buck-passing account of value, and has the means to avoid the wrong kind of…Read more
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100The Dualism of the Practical Reason: Some Interpretations and ResponsesEtica and Politica / Ethics and Politics 10 (2): 19-41. 2008.Sidgwick’s dualism of the practical reason is the idea that since egoism and utilitarianism aim both to have rational supremacy in our practical decisions, whenever they conflict there is no stronger reason to follow the dictates of either view. The dualism leaves us with a practical problem: in conflict cases, we cannot be guided by practical reason to decide what all things considered we ought to do. There is an epistemic problem as well: the conflict of egoism and utilitarianism shows that th…Read more
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33Iwao Hirose and Andrew Reisner : Weighing and Reasoning. Themes from the Philosophy of John Broome: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 255 pp., Hardback, € 62,99 (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (3): 805-807. 2016.
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26Russ Shafer-Landau, ed. , Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Volume 5 . Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 33 (1): 77-81. 2013.